Boston Marathon bombing of 2013terrorist attack that took place a short distance from the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. A pair of homemade bombs detonated in the crowd watching the race, killing 3 people and injuring more than 180260.

The explosions occurred roughly five hours into the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. The marathon is traditionally held on Patriots’ Day, a public holiday in Massachusetts, and the festive atmosphere draws hundreds of thousands of spectators to the 42,195-metre (26-mile 385-yard) route from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, to Boston’s Back Bay neighbourhood. At approximately 2:50 pm, the first bomb exploded less than half a block from the race’s finish line, on the north side of Boylston Street. Roughly 12 seconds later, a second bomb exploded some 600 feet (180 meters) from the first. It too was planted on the north side of Boylston Street amid a crowd of onlookers. First responders reacted immediately, and a medical tent that had been erected to treat runners was turned into an emergency medical facility. Three bombing victims died of their injuries, and more than 100 of the seriously injured were transferred to area hospitals as local police and federal investigators surveyed a crime scene that covered 15 square blocks.

In the days following the attacks, law-enforcement personnel solicited assistance from the public, asking for photographs or video footage that might prove relevant to their investigation. It was revealed that devices used in the attacks were pressure cookers that had been packed with an explosive substance, nails, and ball bearings—the latter two elements acting as shrapnel when the bombs detonated. On April 18 the Federal Bureau of Investigation released images and video of two men identified as suspects in the attacks, including one photograph that showed one of the men placing a package at the location of the second explosion.

Within hours, the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer and the armed carjacking of a sport-utility vehicle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, spurred speculation about a possible connection between these crimes and the marathon bombings. Police pursued the stolen vehicle to the Boston suburb of Watertown, and an intense firefight ensued, during which Tamerlan Tsarnaev, identified as one of the two suspects in the bombing, was wounded by explosives and multiple gunshots and died. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, fled the scene, triggering a massive house-to-house manhunt on April 19 that covered the surrounding area and that resulted in much of Greater Boston coming to an unprecedented standstill as officials requested that residents remain in their homes and that businesses not open. The “stay home” order was lifted at 6:00 pm, and later that evening Tsarnaev—who had concealed himself in a boat in a residential backyard—was located and apprehended by police. On April 22 federal prosecutors charged Tsarnaev with using a weapon of mass destruction in the marathon attacks; if convicted, he faced the possibility of the death penalty.